March 01, 2015

If banks in Greece are prohibited to hold foreign assets against less equity than holding Greek assets… is it ideology?

Sir, you describe a list of “pragmatic concessions” issued by Greece’s Syriza government to the eurogroup of finance ministers as “wrapped in the language of ideology”, “Syriza and Europe must be patient and pragmatic” March 1.

I have a question. If I was a finance minister in Greece, and required all banks that operated in Greece to hold the same equity against all assets, because that made sense to Greece, would that be an ideological stance?

Because as is, to allow banks operating in Greece to hold less equity against assets located outside of Greece, only because these asset are perceived as safer from a credit point of view… sound to me like outright ideological nonsense.